School of Welsh

From Bangor to the Library of Congress – to study Welsh

Gwilym Morus, a PhD student in the School of Welsh, has been awarded a prestigious Library of Congress Scholarship which will enable him to spend an extended period of study in one of the world’s most dynamic national libraries. Gwilym’s field of study is medieval Welsh poetry, but his period in Washington’s Library of Congress – between October and January – will be spent accessing comparative material relating to African and North American oral poetry and performance traditions. Gwilym’s interests in such areas are not only academic. He is also a well-known performance artist whose songs are regularly heard on Radio Cymru and S4C.

The Library of Congress Scholarship is a scheme run jointly between the AHRC and the ESRC. The scheme offers the chance for AHRC/ESRC funded doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows and research assistants to access the internationally renowned research collection at Washington’s Library of Congress. The scheme is not limited to those researching American studies. With more than 138 million items on 650 miles of bookshelves and 10,000 new items added each day, students are sure to find material relevant to diverse areas of research.